Lords of Creation

by Eando Binder

  “Does it amaze even you, Humrelly, who knew the colossus of ancient New York?” The girl of Antarka showed the faintest pleasure at his surprise. “There are twenty levels, resting on bedrock a mile below. The city is not wide, no more than a half-mile. The levels are suspended between rock, at the circumference, and these pillars. The whole is built symmetrically around the central elevator well, giving us short, easy transportation down and up. It is like, Humrelly, one building of your time on a grander scale, sunk into the earth.”

  Ellory had already made that comparison in his mind. A super Empire State building, plumbing the depths instead of piercing the sky.

  “Our reasons were two,” ErMalne continued. “One, the saving in building material. Fifty percent of our wall-space is furnished by mother earth. Secondly, the easier access to deeply buried coal and metal deposits. The rise of Antarka, out of the Dark Time, is based wholly on those deposits. But I will explain more fully some other time. Come.”

  They traversed the metal bridge.

  Sharina clung fearfully to Ellory’s arm, averting her eyes from the depths. To her, this first glimpse of metal-and-power civilization was pure shock. She tiptoed, as an original Stone Age creature might have at the top of a twentieth-century skyscraper, fearing to shake apart the magically hung structure beneath.

  The metal bridge led to the true floor of the first level, and beyond were receding tiers of sub-levels, each like the floor of a hotel. Steps, slanting ramps, and outside elevators connected all with the “ground” level. Walking lanes pierced back and back to the limiting rock walls of the narrow city. Living quarters of a variety of bungalow-like houses clustered about areas that shone green with grass. The perfume of flowers wafted in the air. Brilliant sun lamps sprayed down their actinic rays on these park-like spaces.

  Ellory drew an admiring breath. The Antarkans had fashioned a miniature elysium, combing the best of mechanics and imported nature.

  “You think well of our city?” ErMalne inquired, laughingly. “Humrelly, your face is more eloquent than your tongue could ever be!”

  Ellory tried to frown.

  “Exquisite exteriors often hide dark things,” he retorted meaningly.

  Then he did frown, blackly.

  A stream of Antarkans ahead, in their resplendent silks, resolved in his eyes. Most were walking leisurely, like lords in some higher life. But sprinkled among them were some in wheeled chairs. Pushing their indolent, blond occupants were darker-skinned men, dressed in drab cloth.

  The Stone Age men, in one aspect of their servile capacity to the Lords of Antarka! The reminder tightened Ellory’s lips, so that even the magnificent building they approached a few minutes later failed to stir him.

  “My home,” ErMalne remarked.

  Ellory stared. The Taj Mahal in its heyday could not have matched this grandeur. Golden cornices, argent silver eaves, gleaming white marble—it was creative art frozen in stunning beauty.

  “We have most of the gold and silver, treasured by the ages, here in Antarka, for ornament,” said ErMalne, slightly boastful.

  Ellory turned. This building stood out. All the others faded by comparison. He looked at the girl.

  “Yours?” he repeated.

  “Yes. I’m Lady of Lillamra, didn’t you know? First Lady of this city. Wait—what would you call it? Queen, I think.”

  “Queen?”

  Ellory recalled then the deferential air of the Antarkans who had passed. They had nodded to her as respectfully as Sharina’s people nodded to any of the Antarkans.

  “And you would call this my palace,” she resumed. “Come. You are my guests. Understand, Humrelly, this is a great honor. You deserve a prison cell!”

  She searched is face for appreciation that he stonily withheld.

  Later, in a dining room hung with flowing drapes, the three sat before a sumptuous banquet table. Ellory smiled cynically. In the twentieth century, criminals sentenced to die had enjoyed a last meal of their choice.

  “Tell me of your interment, Humrelly,” urged the Lady of Lillamra. “And of your former life in that great, strange time of which we know so little.”

  Ellory talked mechanically, eating little. The recent collapse of all his plans and work, for so many months weighed oppressively. And how few were the hours reMalning to him? This was all mockery, refinement of torture. His golden fork dropped from nervous fingers finally.

  “When will the so-called trial be held?” he demanded bluntly.

  “Trial?” ErMalne, Lady of Lillamra, smiled slowly. “You have been on trial since we left Norak!”

  Ellory stared.

  “I am your judge and jury,” the girl of Antarka continued. “The Outland Council have agreed.” She looked at him and Ellory felt like a puppet dangling on a string. “I defer the final decision for the present”

  She arose.

  “You are both tired and distraught. Tomorrow you will feel better. I’ll show you our city and our life.” She paused.

  “Well, Humrelly? No thanks for the reprieve? The others would have put you to death summarily.”

  “Thanks—for nothing,” Ellory went on, watching her enigmatic eyes. “Does the leopard change his spots?”

  The shaft went home, as he could see in the slight frown on her brow.

  Sharina and Ellory were led to adjoining rooms in a long hall. A man came to Ellory’s room, to dress his burns, applying fresh salve. He was an elderly Outlander, evidently trained by the Antarkans in the healing art. He was well-groomed, sleek and well-fed, and had a certain urban air that spoke of a calm, secure life.

  “How long have you been here?” queried Ellory.

  “Thirty years, since I was twenty,” the man responded without emotion.

  “Do you like your life here? Speak freely. I’m an Outlander, like yourself. Are you treated well?”

  “Yes, I am treated well.” He looked around the room guardedly. “But I hate it!” he said dully. “We all hate it. We work only for them!”

  “Have you tried to escape?” Ellory ventured.

  “Escape!” The tones were hopeless. “There is none. After thirty years, I know that. The metal cap of the city seals us in. Lords guard the few exits, day and night, with guns.”

  He shook his head sadly, leaving.

  Ellory lay on soft cushions, surrounded by the luxury of Antarka, thinking. ErMalne planned toying with him, that was obvious. She would try to break his spirit. Beneath her veneer of beauty she was calculatingly cruel. He trembled with hate for her. Hate? He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure of anything any more, in this mad world of the fiftieth century.

  He sank into the unrestful sleep of mental, physical and spiritual fatigue.

  Chapter 20

  THE CAVERN CITY

  Days passed swiftly. ErMalne told first of the rise of Antarka. “A thousand years ago—eleven hundred to be exact—civilization was at its lowest ebb. And you may know in part, Humrelly, your age ended about 3000 A.D. A thousand years of that wasteful era left nothing for the following. No ores, coal or oil. Mankind dropped to the bottom.

  “For nine hundred years—savagery. Only a legend reMalned of a strange land to the south, blessed with buried treasures. Your age, luckily, could not brave the icy breath of Antarka. We’ve found ruins though, of abortive mining camps. They tried and failed.”

  Ellory nodded. “They talked of exploiting Antarctica in my time even.”

  ErMalne resumed. “A sailing vessel blew accidentally to the coast of Antarka, eleven hundred years ago. The Year One, by our calendar. Improving climate had at last driven away the hoarding ice, they found. And they found lumps of black matter that burned, other lumps that melted and formed the miraculous, almost mythical metal.”

  “Just as in the original Stone Age,” murmu
red Ellory. “Your ancestors, then, were pure savages, like the rest.”

  She nodded. “They—”

  Ellory interrupted. “They were just lucky, in finding Antarka. Sharina’s ancestors might just as well have been the ones. And you, today, would be in her place, she in yours. By what divine right do you Antarkans today lay absolute claim to the last of Earth’s metal and coal?”

  “In your time,” countered ErMalne shrewdly, “did the rich yield their places to the poor?”

  “Go on!” he snapped.

  “The civilization of power and metal sprang up again in Antarka, naturally. However, food could not be grown in the wintry land. Two courses lay open. It was wiser, those early Antarkans decided, to build cities near the coal and metal and import food, than to build cities near food and import coal and metal.”

  “A rule of economics we should have applied more in our age,” confessed Ellory, thinking of the cotton mills of New England, remote from both coal and cotton.

  “The cities were hollowed out and extended downward, level by level, through many years. Ten such cities came into being around the coastline of Antarka, at the ten sites nearest the best deposits. They were limited from the start. Another problem arose—population. Birth-rate control was instituted. It might have been wiser in your time, Humrelly—

  “In one short century all this was accomplished,” ErMalne resumed. “All the planning, building, inventing of legendary machines, rebirth of science. It was a sudden renaissance, inspired by black coal and hard metal. You see, Humrelly, mankind hadn’t really lost all its knowledge. Much of it was recorded in scattered monasteries and forgotten temples. But his tools he had lost. The uprise of Antarka was sudden, swift, like a flower blooming in the desert.”

  “And the same thing could happen over the rest of Earth, given power and metal,” Ellory’s eyes shone a little.

  ErMalne arose.

  “Well, that is all of the story.”

  “All?” Ellory rose to his feet also. “But you’ve left out one entire phase—the serfdom of the Outland, as you call it!”

  “Oh that!” ErMalne waved airily. “It’s such a minor thing.”

  Ellory glared. Outside, for a thousand years, the less blessed people had had to reshape their whole philosophy of life, to conform to Antarkan standards.

  “I weary of this talk,” ErMalne continued. “Some other time. By the way—” She faced them both. “The reports have come in. The rebellion failed everywhere in your empire, Humrelly. The lesson is being administered. Your Norak capital was burned down.”

  Sharina caught her breath.

  “My father?” she asked timidly.

  “He’s safe, little Outlander. We allowed evacuation of the city. Come, I will show you the lower levels.”

  Ellory followed with a seething desire to take ErMalne’s slim white neck in his powerful hands and choke all the arrogance out of her. Yet, could he blame her? A thousand years of tradition ruled her mind. Only blood and sword had ever changed tradition, as with the unfederated tribes.

  A swift descent in the yawning central elevator pit took them down to the eleventh level. “The lower ten levels,” ErMalne explained, “hold our workshops, machinery, metal refineries, laboratories, etc.”

  On several successive days, she guided them through the wonders of her city.

  Ellory felt the breath of the twentieth century in what he saw. The rumble of machinery was music in his ears, after the pastoral, unfulfilled silences of the outer world. Level after level was crammed with the sonorous discord of laboring metal and subservient power. Looms quite similar to those of 1970 wove fine, patterned cloth. Spinning, grinding lathes turned out metallic paraphernalia.

  Ellory thrilled. Machines in the service of man!

  But then he frowned, seeing that fully half of the personnel tending the machines were ruddy-skinned Outlanders. The blond, slim Lords, in their role as workers, moved levers and watched gauges, their white hands and clothing hardly soiled. The Outlanders, grimed and active, fed the machines and carried heavy materials.

  Another level was quieter.

  Here a chemical industry reigned. Raw materials, from Antarkan deposits, furnished acids and important reagents. Huge vats bubbled. A variety of plastic products was known to the Antarkans. Artificial silk trailed endlessly from spinnarets. Coal-tar extractions gave dyes, medicines and the hundred-and-one other variations of its complexity.

  At the mining levels, lower down, great caverns led beyond the rock walls, to coal and metal veins. Little trains pulled by chugging engines emerged with their all-important cargoes.

  ErMalne, a little distastefully, took them on a ride into one winding passage. Miles beyond, in a beamed chamber, miners were drilling out coal with compressed-air hammers. They were all, Ellory noticed, Outlanders, with a spotlessly clothed Antarkan superintendent in charge.

  Somehow, to Ellory, it was all quite twentieth century, not much more advanced in technology or method. Except for their rocket ships, only one thing struck a unique note—a giant mechanical lung for the subterranean city.

  An enormous conduit led from the upper surface down to bedrock, with outlets at each level. He could hear the low whine of colossal fans, sucking down the fresh air, thrusting it out for human lungs. At the opposite side, another conduit reversed the process, shoving used air out into the upper world.

  Ellory suspected that the average purity of air was better, because of the steady current, than it had been in the canyons of New York.

  “Well, Humrelly,” ErMalne asked when he had seen all, smiling at him, “does it impress the man from the mighty past that knew these things all over the world?”

  Ellory nodded grudgingly. But again, something lurked in his mind, as it had when he first viewed the metal-less world outside the crypt.

  “Where are the generating plants? Do you produce electricity by steam-engine, steam-turbine, or what?”

  “Electricity?” ErMalne stumbled over the word a little. “You mean battery current? We don’t use that. Gasoline motors run all our machines. Gasoline is our power staple. All crude oil is cracked down into gasoline. All coal is hydrogenated to oil, and similarly cracked down. Gasoline gives us heat, light and power. What is the need of electricity?”

  “No electricity!” gasped Ellory. Antarkan science dropped again in his estimation, a great drop this time.

  But then, he reflected, electricity was really unnecessary, in this compact community. Gasoline could be piped to every corner of this city with little effort. Electricity had become the dominant factor in the twentieth century only because it was the best way to ship power.

  His thoughts rolled on.

  “Now I see why you don’t have radio. But you have mercury-arc lamps, for your gardens. And how did you amplify your voice, in the square at Norak?”

  “Mercury vapor, highly heated by gasoline jets, shines with ultra-violet light. My voice was amplified by sending it through a vibrating series of pipes delicately pitched to the human voice.”

  “Organ-pipe principle.” Ellory nodded. He laughed suddenly. “Man, could I show you some things, with electricity! You don’t have telegraph, telephone?”

  ErMalne shook her head. “No. Many of your twentieth century secrets have escaped us. Records are so incomplete.”

  Ellory was more amazed each second. Antarkan science was badly spotted with blanks.

  “But how do you communicate with the other cities—only by going there?” He laughed again, thinking of clumsily written messages going back and forth.

  “In other words,” he went on, “you have twentieth-century machinery, with only eighteenth-century modes of communication. Not what I expected after the wonders you’ve shown me.” His tone was mocking.

  ErMalne however appeared only slightly net
tled.

  “You still have much to learn, Humrelly. It’s true that we have no telegraph or telephone. You must tell me about them some time. But from the little we know of them, I should say that we do quite well with our own devices.” She smiled.

  “We have something similar—sonophone, we call it. Solid matter transmits sound-waves much more readily than air. The rock stratum between cities carries voice messages. We have developed a way to speed them a hundred miles a second. I’ll show you.”

  She led them to a sound-proof chamber and sat before a great hide drum, enclosed in glass, Straight metal pipes pierced from this sounding board deep into the rock wall of the city.

  “Lady ErMalne calling Queemarlan. Connect me with Lady Tassan.”

  “Queemarlan”—Queen Mary Land, Ellory surmised, the coast of Antarctica about a quarter-circle away. Strange how the past left its impress on the future, in man’s language.

  They waited; then—

  “Yes? Is that you, ErMalne?”

  The voice came back, low but distinct, after-an interval of thirty seconds, through the medium of fifteen hundred miles of rock. ErMalne smiled at Ellory in triumph. He, in turn, was wondering how thunderously earthquakes must register at times, in this rock-borne phone system.

  Forgetting her companions for the moment, ErMalne began an interchange of half-personal comment. Ellory grinned. Just like two girls of his day chatting over the phone. It was a little queer, though, because of the thirty-second blank intervals of transmission. Little of their conversation meant anything, until suddenly the distant speaker said:

  “Still heart-free ErMalne? Kalor didn’t mean anything after all? Lillamra still needs a Lord! There are little rumors here that the rebel leader—Humrelly, is it?—has been in your company long hours and days. Tell me, ErMalne, what is he—”